Uncover the Hidden Truths of Creativity and Suffering in Alex Boyd’s Latest Essay Collection
Boyd’s selections showcase a writing life that is also intimately shaped by reading. In one of the early essays, “Charlotte Brontë: The Only Self-Help Author You Need,” Boyd uses the genre conventions of self-help in order to say something simple and specific about Brontë’s influence on his own writing: “if you want to be a writer (or anything else) learn it like there’s little else in the world.”
Later, in that same essay, he applies the lesson of Jane Eyre in a contemporary context: “These days people fuss when there’s a lineup at Starbucks and we’re in danger of losing touch with something important — simple enough, the delay between desire and gratification, which makes something finally, sweetly satisfying.” The essay ends with a rather pointed assessment of the usefulness of authors like Brontë and Jane Austen in modern life, culminating with the observation that both “provide rich, graceful reminders that happiness is sometimes behind a certain amount of adversity.”
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